I’ve written before about not being sure where to call home. It’s a stream of consciousness I’ve had multiple times, and I find I invariably come to no conclusion… unless I happen to be in Washington at the time.

We are soooooooooooo (I don’t think I can include enough ‘o’s to emphasize here) happy to be in Seattle for the summer. The employer has set us up in a great location–up close and personal to downtown. I have an incredible view out our living room all day, and little slivers of water view when I look at just the right angle. It’s a beautiful, brand new apartment. They’re paying us. My family is just an hour away. The dr and hospital that I love is blocks away. I can literally see the library from my living room. But these are all just conveniences.

I distinctly remember one time when flying in to Seattle from Alaska, wondering if it would even feel like home anymore, or if it would just be a place to visit my parents. When we got through the cloud cover and I saw downtown, I actually started crying. On the airplane. And tried to hide that fact from the other passengers. I’m quite sure I failed.

And just the other day when we were on the freeway, one of us commented how much we love driving on the freeway here (top 5 worst commutes in America, what?). Everywhere we go, one of us is saying to the other we love how green it is, or we love how the houses were designed here, we love driving down the hill in Ravenna, we love seeing glimpses of the sound, we love old craftsmans, we love the people, we love Gas Works, we love the buildings on UW campus, we love the trees, the rhodies, the hydrangeas, the clouds, the fog, the water, the bridges… you name it, we love it here.

I forgot just how many people up here I love spending time with. Between friends from work, and friends from our old congregation, I could actually have a social life again.

Being in Washington just always feels right.

*the state song… in case you were wondering why I deviated from Ty’s preferred sentence case

I just finished my first year in the BYU MBA program. It’s hard to believe it’s halfway over already. I can’t believe how much happened in just eight months. The image on this post is of the Tanner Building as I remember it from undergrad. For Homecoming Week the school used to hang a gigantic Y banner from the west end of the building. When I would drive back to Provo from my summers at home in Washington, I would get to the crest of the hill in Orem, see the banner and let out a holler (to myself) with my anticipation for the new school year.* With the Tanner Building addition a few years ago, they don’t hang this banner anymore, which is kind of sad. Instead I go to business school in a part of the building that now stands where the banner hangs in the photo. It’s a decent tradeoff.

I loved my first year in the program. I got to work hard and challenge myself in new subjects. I got to interview for internships with the two companies I was most interested in: Microsoft in Redmond and Bank of America in Charlotte. To my utter amazement, I got offers from both companies and then had the unconscionable difficulty of choosing between two amazing opportunities.

Tyler, Brett, me, Maya, and Dan on the day we met and won the tower challenge.

I also made great connections with my classmates and professors. To illustrate some of the amazing people there, the program assigned me to an all-star team first semester. We met during orientation week, and I knew they were an awesome bunch when we started winning everything right away! I have had a lot of fun on different types of teams in the past, but generally my teams don’t win things. I can’t take any credit for our winnings, except to say I lucked out with the best group. Ropes course challenge? Won. Tallest tower of leadership? Landslide. Stratsim marketing competition? Yes. Not only do these people excel at their efforts, they are just good people in general. For one class project, we decided as a group to throw a service project on short notice feeding lunches to the homeless population in Salt Lake. I’m certain it was my most memorable day of the fall semester.

Our team at the end of the year, before scattering across the country.

As much as I loved working with my group throughout the first semester, I knew we had become good friends when the semester was over and we were still making an effort to spend time together, not just the five of us, but our families as well. Now that the year is over and we have scattered to Washington, California, Texas, and New York, I’m really excited to see them in a few months and hear about their summer experiences.

* I may be combining stories here. The building looked like this for at least my freshman year. Later, when I actually had a car to drive myself to Provo, the Tanner Building addition was already underway or finished. It still makes a nice story though.

After a recent conversation, I am forced to re-evaluate all my childhood memories. ‘Cause turns out things that I thought were totally normally in my head are not anything that anyone else thinks. Or, as I prefer to think of it, my brain is just remarkably creative.

In the house I grew up in, I knew the dead bolt was locked when it looked like this. Well, mostly like this. Approximately like this.

Mostly it looked like it was a face with a mustache when the door was locked. So, in the grand tradition of Stephanie, I made up a quasi-mnemonic device that really serves no good purpose. In this case, during my daily routine obsession with checking the door locks, I would glance at the door and think, oh good. Mustache.

The mustache became not just linked, but synonymous with security. Can we talk about the irony there?

I have since suffered multiple setbacks upon realizing that some dead bolts look like this:

What am I supposed to think when I see that? Nose? Beak? Everyone knows that noses and beaks have nothing to do with dead bolts. It’s absurd. Irrational.

Even worse are these:

Okay. I can see that it has a little lock symbol. And I can see an arrow. But actually you mean that it’s locked when it’s at a weird angle. Okay. Cool. I’ll never remember that.

It’s interesting how much we self-identify with certain things. Things that may or may not have anything to do with anything, but can cause dramatic responses when challenged.

Growing up I was blonde. Bright sister-golden-hair blonde. I knew as I got into high school and college it got darker, but I still identified as a blonde. It was just dark blonde. Turns out, when I meet new people, they think I’m brunette. It kind of weirds me out. Don’t they know I’m blonde?? Curiously enough, my mother also self-identifies as a blonde–her drivers license even says ‘blonde’. But for as long as I’ve been around, she has definitely been a brunette.

Now–hair color is one of those things that doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t change your personality or help you win friends or influence people, but it is a distinguishing part of your appearance. And if you are surprised every time you look in the mirror because you don’t feel like you look like yourself, that can be wearing. My color change was gradual enough it was never a surprise, each day looks much like the one before. But when I talk to someone and they mention that my hair is brown, I am startled every time. Like it’s a new thing I’ve never heard of before and not prepared to understand.

So what about things that are bigger than hair? Like careers, or where you’re from.

I’ve lived enough places by now, that when I run into other people from there, they introduce me as being ‘from …’ We actually had a funny incident a few weeks ago when Ty and I met up with a bunch of my old Michigan friends. Ty made some off-hand reference to me being from Seattle. Everyone at the table got really still. Finally someone responded that I was definitely from Michigan. So apparently I’m a real good social-chameleon. But it begs lots of questions.

Am I from Michigan because that’s where I spent my formative years? Am I from Alaska because that’s where I came into my own and learned who I was as an adult (but apparently not because I still feel the need to think about these things)? Or am I from Washington–where I grew up, where my parents live, where I met my husband and we spent our first years as a couple?

Somewhere between 18 and 24 months of marriage, and we have learned a few things about ourselves individually and as a couple.

Stephanie is Queen (capital Q) of the Nebeker home – although the image above is not actually a castle; it’s the stunning University of Washington library.

Capitalization is an important issue with Tyler, who has spent a significant portion of his early career as an editor. In most matters he is capital-letter averse. Stephanie is not. Note the following example: Tyler is currently a grad student. Most recently before returning to school, he was a business consultant. Stephanie is a recovering Interior Designer (again, capitalized), who has also worked as a landscape designer (curiously lower-case). She will talk more about her career in another post.

All of these issues come to head when two design-opinionated individuals co-create a family website. What form of heading capitalization will we use? Will we use two spaces or one between sentences? Thankfully we both agree on the necessity (grammatically and stylistically) of the Oxford comma. Whew – we dodged a bullet there.

Mostly we have learned that we agree on all the important things, disagree on really insignificant things, and when it really matters, the Queen (capital Q) is Right (capital R).

So when Ty and I first got married, I thought it would be a great idea for the two of us to have a blog together. After all, we’re both design-y and like writing, and I had enjoyed blogging on-and-off for several years to that point. I made a new blog address for us and started posting there instead of my old blog once we got married. I was super excited about the whole thing.

Unfortunately Ty had a hang-up with the idea of a blog.

So I carried on posting to our joint-venture that turns out he was not super interested in.

We had a turning point a few months ago. Ty declared that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if our blog was hosted by WordPress instead of Blogspot. Connotations and all that. My ears perked at the unexpected opinion and we immediately set about conceptualizing and designing our site-to-be, complete with charts and infographics… then we didn’t do anything about it until this week when it suddenly seemed like a good idea again.

So welcome to our new blog! Even if there might be a few pre-dated posts that were either transferred from our original blog, or converted to posts from other documents/letters we’ve written. It still counts as new.

I love The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. I mean really. Who doesn’t? I thought it would be really fun to have a onesie with the caterpillar on it. I did a fabric marker version for a friend a year or so ago, but decided I wanted to try with buttons. I love how it turned out!

Everything but the onesie I found at JoAnn’s. I used a 0-3 month onesie, with 7/8″D red button and 1/2″D green buttons, so you can get an idea for scale.

This actually turned out to be a great project for me right now (read: on restricted activity and not used to taking it easy and kind of going stir-crazy), I could do it sitting down, and it kept my brain occupied.

I started by simply laying out the buttons and moving them around until I liked the look of it. Then I carefully lifted the buttons one at a time and made a small mark on the fabric where I wanted them to end up. At this point, my mother recommends using stabilizer on the inside of the onesie to make it more durable. But I had forgotten to buy some, so I just made do without and it was fine, but I will admit that afterword I wished I had used stabilizer.

After sewing the buttons (make sure to double-check your locations before starting each button), I added the antennae using embroidery thread. I didn’t want to have any marks on the fabric here, so I actually just pierced the fabric with the needle to show myself what path to take. I used a simple back-stitch, and a french knot for the ball at the end. I you are unfamiliar with embroidery stitches, this is a great post that can get you started.